


Floating

by prickledheart



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abstract, Alcoholism, Character Study, Confusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 22:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19858723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prickledheart/pseuds/prickledheart
Summary: It’s not easy to save the world when you’re crazy, Five decides.





	Floating

**Author's Note:**

> found this in my documents in the back of a lyft. it’s from march !

It’s not easy to save the world when you’re crazy, Five decides. 

It’s on a Friday afternoon, he’s not sure which, not exactly, that he decides this; and he is floating, floating away, until he is tethered by the thought.

He laughs, but it’s not funny- “it never was,” chides Allison, but it doesn’t matter. He’s drunk, not stupid.

She tells him she never said he was, and he quiets; he didn’t think he’d said it out loud.

-

It is an afternoon, he thinks, but he doesn’t know which one; he has been floating for a long time and he is tethered- by absolutely nothing. 

Five is sitting at the kitchen table- no, not at it, on it- and he is holding a cup of coffee, but he is not drinking it. He poured it just at the break of dawn, and for whatever reason, only just now is Grace asking him to remove himself from it’s wooden surface so she can serve them breakfast-

“Dinner,” is what she says, actually- but he knows he heard her incorrectly. 

He had to.

-

It’s… sometime, he knows, when he has finally lost it. Or, perhaps, Five has never had it- he doesn’t know.

What he does know, are his brothers are being ridiculous. Luther and Diego are arguing over something (though he doesn’t know what, their words are stern): they are trying to get him to pick sides. 

Five shrugs, and takes a sip of his margarita- Klaus watches his face contort, but he doesn’t quite know why it does. 

There’s a silence, as they behold him, and Luther just huffs. “This is what I’m talking about,” he spits, and leaves Diego, utterly silent for once in what seems like a long time.

_Oh,_ he thinks, as he looks down; it’s not a margarita at all. It’s coffee, and he’s unaware- there’s an umbrella in it, like he knew what he was intending to do, but it’s clear Five’s gotten mixed up somehow. 

Klaus only shakes his head, and sighs.

-

Five is somewhere.

But he doesn’t know where- only that he is.

(Vanya has to coax him down from on top of a shelf- she starts to ask how he got up there, but then remembers how he would; Five, in contrast, does not- he simply falls, and they both bruise.)

-

_Five,_ they beg, they call, and he knows, somewhere, somehow, that it’s him, it’s he who they’re calling; but he doesn’t know who, doesn’t know why, or where. 

But they’re calling.

And he sits, or stands, or exists- quiet, and in a vacuum.


End file.
